Chapter 77
Mist and the scent of twilight roses enveloped me as I stumbled onto the grass outside the Luceren castle. My legs buckled, exhaustion and shock finally catching up as the rush of the fight faded. I sank to my knees, fingers digging into the damp earth, anchoring myself to reality.
I was home. We were safe.
Hands touched my shoulders, my arms, steadying me as I knelt in the damp grass, my body trembling from the remnants of power thrumming through me.
“Isara,” Linc’s tone was urgent, rough with concern. “Are you alright? Talk to us—are you hurt?”
Darian crouched beside me, his usual smirk absent, his eyes scanning me like he was trying to find where I was broken. “You look like hell.” But there was no bite to it, only worry.
Linc’s expression was harder. “You were going to kill yourself,” he bit out. “For me.”
I swallowed, unable to look at him. Unable to look at any of them.
But Linc wasn’t finished. “You don’t get to make choices like that for us, Isara. Do you understand?” His voice shook. “I would rather have died than have you—”
He broke off, his jaw clenching as he struggled to contain his emotions. The silence was unbearable between us, filled with raw pain.
“I couldn’t do it,” I whispered. “I couldn’t kill you. I couldn’t kill Varyth. I—” My breath hitched, the memories flooding back with brutal clarity. “I couldn’t make that choice.”
Before either of us could say another word, I saw him.
Varyth.
Blood streaked his bare chest, his ashen hair tangled, his pale skin marred with bruises and wounds, but none of that mattered.
He was alive.
My body moved without thought. I scrambled to my feet and launched myself at him.
Varyth barely had time to brace before I crashed into him. My arms wrapped around his neck, my fingers tangling into his hair, seeking proof that he was real. That we were here. That we were free.
His arms locked around me instantly, crushing me against him, his breath a shudder against my temple. His scent hit me—blood, sweat, mist. Familiar.
“You’re here,” I gasped, my fingers digging into his back, the fabric of his tunic bunching beneath my grip. “You’re here—”
Varyth pulled back to cup my face between his hands. His thumb brushed over my cheekbone, my lips, as though needing to confirm that I was whole, that I was truly in front of him.
“Isara.” He said my name like it was the only thing keeping him breathing.
His mouth crashed against mine with a hunger that didn’t come from the body but from the soul, from the raw, aching place that had feared this would never happen again.
I moaned into him, arms wrapping tighter around his neck as his fingers speared into my hair, tugging just enough to make me gasp. My lips parted, and he took. Every inch of control I had left, every thought that wasn’t him, gone. Obliterated.
I kissed him back like I wanted to burn the world down with our mouths. Like I could carve away the pain if I just kissed him hard enough, deep enough, long enough to forget everything except the shape of him against me.
“When you’re healed,” he growled against my lips, “when you’re whole again, I’m going to make you scream. Until you forget every name but mine. Until your legs shake and your voice breaks and you beg me not to stop.”
He kissed me again, slower this time, but just as deep. His hands splayed across my back, one rising to cradle the back of my skull, and I felt the tremble in him. The restraint. The promise.
Not now. But soon.
When we broke apart, he pressed his forehead to mine.
“Never again,” he growled, “I will never let anyone take you from me again.”
For a heartbeat, we stared at each other, the realisation of our freedom, our survival, crashing over us.
“I thought I’d lost you,” Varyth murmured, his arms locked around me as if afraid I might disappear. “When I saw what you were about to do—”
“I couldn’t choose. I couldn’t—”
“Shh,” he soothed, pressing his lips to my temple. “It’s over now. We’re home.”
He set me down, hands gripping my waist, unwilling to let go completely.
“What happened after we left?” he asked. “How did you escape Ashterion?”
I hesitated, the memory of those final moments in Nyxaria still fresh and unsettling. “He... let me go,” I admitted. “Said he had no reason to keep me now that you were all gone.”
Varyth’s grip tightened imperceptibly. “And you believe him?”
“I don’t know what to believe,” I said honestly. “He told me to tell you there would be no war. That his forces would return to his territory.”
Varyth’s jaw clenched, scepticism etched into every line of his face. “Ashterion doesn’t surrender. This isn’t over.”
Shaelith stepped forward, and it was not calm that radiated from her. It was fury. Grief sharpened into something jagged and volatile, burning in her eyes like a wildfire that had found too much to consume and not enough to save.
Her hands were shaking. Her mouth trembled, but not with sorrow. With rage.
“We can dissect Ashterion’s motives later,” she spat. “Right now, we need healers. And we need to—” Her breath hitched in her throat before it exploded into a broken snarl. “We need to honour Brynelle.”
The name cleaved through the air.
Everything stopped.
The world tilted again beneath me, the grief striking fresh and cruel and impossibly real. I had been holding it off—burying it beneath urgency, beneath survival, beneath hope. But her name undid it all.
I took a step forward. “Shaelith—”
“Don’t,” she hissed. She didn’t look at me, her hands were balled into fists at her sides, nails biting into her palms.
“I just—” I tried again, guilt swelling in my throat, cracking my voice. “I didn’t mean—”
“I don’t blame you,” she snapped.
But her eyes slid to mine for a split second, and I saw it.
The lie.
She might not want to blame me. She might not choose to. But somewhere deep in the marrow of her grief, some part of her already did. Maybe she always would.
I stood there, hollow, useless, as the others began to gather around her in stunned silence. Darian with his jaw clenched tight. Linc whispering a prayer under his breath. Fenric remained slumped on the ground where healers were already fussing over him.
Cindrissian stood apart, his gaze fixed on the sky, like if he didn’t look down, it wouldn’t be real.
But it was.
We had made it out.
And she hadn’t.
Brynelle.
Her laughter. Her bite. Her loyalty. Her quiet strength.
Gone.
And there was nothing left to do now but bleed and burn.
“We should go inside,” Darian said, rough with exhaustion. “The others will be waiting.”
The others. My children. They would be waiting, wondering, terrified for us. The thought of them sent a surge of renewed strength through my battered body.
Varyth’s hand slipped quietly into mine, warm and grounding. His touch was gentle, yet firm, guiding me forward with silent reassurance. I clung to it, allowing him to lead me toward the castle, each step pulling me further away from the nightmare we’d escaped.
The doors swung open, bathing us in a wash of warm light from within. Familiar faces blurred together—concerned, relieved, grieving—but I searched desperately past them, seeking two small figures above all else.
Then I saw them. Mireth and Eryx, standing at the far end of the hall, eyes wide and hopeful, waiting anxiously for me. Relief crashed through me with such force it nearly brought me to my knees.
I stood frozen in the threshold.
I had imagined this moment a thousand times while locked behind Xyliria’s walls—racing toward them, dropping to my knees, holding them until my arms gave out. I had imagined their cries of relief, their laughter, the warmth of their little hands gripping mine.
But now, with Mireth and Eryx just steps away, I couldn’t move.
I couldn’t breathe.
Because what if I wasn’t that person anymore?
What if the blood on my skin—the blood I hadn’t realised was still smeared across my arms, my clothes, drying in angry streaks—was all they saw now?
Not their mother. A stranger. A monster wearing her face.
Mireth clung to Eryx. they didn’t run to me. They didn’t smile. They didn’t cry out in joy.
They hesitated.
I took a step forward, and they flinched. It was subtle. But enough to shatter something inside me I hadn’t realised was still whole.
I dropped to my knees on instinct, not knowing what to do with my hands, my words, my everything. “Mireth,” I whispered. “Eryx. I’m here.”
Eryx took a shaky step forward. Mireth held him back.
A sob clawed its way up my throat, but I swallowed it. I didn’t reach for them. I didn’t dare. I just knelt there, trembling and bloodstained, trying not to fall apart while the silence stretched taut around us.
Then Mireth stepped forward. “Mama?”
The name cracked me open.
I nodded, tears spilling freely now. “Yes, love. It’s me.”
Eryx followed her, stumbling into my arms, burying his face in my neck as Mireth knelt beside him. I held them both, held them so tightly I feared I’d crush them—but they clung to me in return.
Relief surged through me.
But beneath it, something fractured.
They were still mine. But they were afraid of the darkness clinging to me. And I didn’t know how to wash it away.
Varyth knelt beside me, silent, solid, grounding. One of his hands came to rest lightly at the curve of my back, his touch barely there. But I felt it like the first warm breeze after a storm.
His voice was low, meant only for me. “They’re safe. You’re safe. That’s what matters now.”
I bit the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste blood, trying to hold back the trembling that threatened to undo me.
But his presence sank into the cracks.
I should’ve felt comforted. I should’ve collapsed against him, let the warmth numb the edges. Instead, Ashterion’s words rose like rot from a grave, curling around the base of my spine.
There are others who are much more adept at hiding what they are.
The memory twisted, and I could almost hear his voice in my ear again.
I shoved it down. Hard.
Down into the tainted parts of me. The places I’d been carving out piece by piece since that first moment in Xyliria’s court. Since the decisions I’d made. Since the screams. Since the blood.
So much broken. So much I didn’t know how to put back.
I tightened my arms around Mireth and Eryx, pressing my cheek into Eryx’s soft curls as Mireth clung to my side like she wasn’t sure she could let go again.
I didn’t deserve this.
Didn’t deserve them.
Didn’t deserve Varyth’s quiet strength beside me. His patience. His promise of safety when I was half-convinced I was the most dangerous thing in the room.
But they were here.
They were mine.
And even if I was too much of a monster to ever deserve this again…
I would hold it anyway.